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So I watched part of Super 8 last night and couldn’t help but notice how similar Stranger Things is in its format. Small town, young group of kids, nefarious institution experimenting and trying to cover it up, kids stumble on what’s going on and are hunted by the baddies, etc.
So I wondered if it would be worth while to turn Super 8 into a spin-off of Stranger Things, at least in its presentation. This also gave me an excuse to mess around in Vegas to see if I could make an intro in the style of Stranger Things.
Here’s a proof of concept opener for what would become a 3 episode presentation of the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV3YlL_FsXQ
Fonts
Logo: Benguiat Std Book
Credits: Avant Garde Gothic Bold
Letters
Each letter of Super 8 was given its own video track. Insert>Text>Benguiat Std Book>Color set to 0.16 transparency level>Scale set to desired size (set to animate)> Location set to desired location (set to animate)>Background set to transparent> Outline width set to 1.701>outline color set to same as text color but with 1.0 transparency score. Animate scale and location for movement (do this instead of using the pan & crop tool). As the opening goes on slowly pull back the scaling and begin cross fading letters. Set desired paths using a set scale and animated location for the last assembly scene (where the letters come together) and use the pan & crop to create a continuous zoom out, then fade.
Credits
All names are set to 3 seconds with 5 frame transitions in & out and 10 frames between each.
Chapter
The chapter was a bit difficult to figure out as the transparency and scaling still didin’t create a smooth edge on the letters. I ended up having the color transition from white to green and then chroma keyed the green out to get the crisp edge on the inside of the text as it super zooms in through the text
Theme
The movie is set in 1979 so I wanted to try and find some synthwave stuff from that year. After some googling I found Gary Numan’s Down in the Park. I love the Foo Fighters’ cover of this song from the X-Files album, but I just couldn’t find a way to make the song work. There was a synthwave cover of the song that was pretty good, but it was a little to happy and I wanted something more Stranger Things feeling. So, I started looking into dark synthwave and Stranger Things inspired tracks. I found the TOXXiFY and their track Cyborg Chase. It has a very similar feeling to Stranger Things and captures a bit of the vibe of Down in the Park so I settled on that. After some clipping here and there and rearranging a few parts I was able to make a ~1 min track that I felt good about.
Ideas
I need to go back through the movie to see what the music is like in it. I may add some Gary Numan stuff and other synthpop from the times to give it more of a Stranger Things feel. I’ll also need to find some pre credits footage that follows the story and sets things up without spoiling things. I was thinking about using the editing room footage from area 51, but it doesn’t really capture the ST vibe and it spoils way too much at the beginning.
It’s a basic idea right now of using this custom intro to create three chapters to tell the story of Super 8. Let me know what you think.
https://digmodification.wordpress.com/2020/08/16/super-8-in-the-style-of-stranger-things/
https://forums.fanedit.org/showthread.php?tid=20359
